Facebook Execs Now Report Directly to Zuckerberg

Published Dec 9, 2011 at 10:20 AM

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Facebook has restructured the company so that product executives report directly to chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg, causing some to speculate the move is to ease fears about its initial public offering.

The reorganization focuses mainly on its new products and ways to streamline the development process, Facebook told the San Jose Mercury News:

We can confirm that in order to streamline the product development process, we have reorganized our technical teams into product groups that report into Mark. These groups will be lead by Bret Taylor, Chris Cox, Greg Badros, Mike Schroepfer and Sam Lessin.

Facebook declined to comment on the executives' new duties or responsibilities.

Facebook is preparing for what could be a $100 billion IPO in 2012 and it needs to show investors it has a "clear chain of command for development of new products," said Charlene Li, founder of research and advisory firm, the Altimeter Group. "[It] creates a much more logical understanding for what the company is doing, and what their focus is on," she said.

It's interesting that Zuckerberg is doing essentially what Google's Larry Page has done -- making executives report directly to him and streamlining the process. That's important as a company gets larger, as Facebook is doing -- it hopes to hire thousands in preparation for its IPO. To deal with rapid growth or changes, the company would have to make some internal changes, so it's not a surprise Facebook has made them. The only surprised is that it's just limited to product development.